In the last several years, multiagency investigations into prison corruption in Maryland have revealed details about the role gangs play in criminal enterprises behind bars.

The 2013 Maryland Gang Threat Assessment from the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center identified the Black Guerrilla Family, Dead Man Incorporated and Crips as three of the state's Top 10 gang threats.

Several alleged members of these groups and their associates have been indicted, with many convicted, in recent years as a result of these corruption investigations.

Black Guerrilla Family

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland described the Black Guerrilla Family in a November news release as a nationwide gang that operates in several prisons and cities across the country, including the Baltimore area.

The group first made headlines in Maryland in 2009 when 24 people associated with the BGF, including four current or former corrections employees, were indicted on federal drug and gun charges.

In 2013, additional indictments of more than 40 alleged gang members and their associates put the spotlight on corruption in state prisons after a federal investigation revealed the BGF had essentially taken control of the Baltimore City Detention Center.

The 2009 indictment alleged the gang was active in several Maryland prisons, including including North Branch Correctional Institution, Eastern Correctional Institution, Roxbury Correctional Institution, Maryland Correctional Institution – Jessup, Baltimore City Detention Center and the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore.

Most recently, two BGF leaders pleaded guilty in November of this year to racketeering conspiracy and now face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Prosecutors explained in a news release regarding the pleas that gang members are organized into "regimes" or "bubbles" that correspond to regions or neighborhoods in Baltimore and other parts of the state.

Those bubbles report to bush members or bushmen, according to the release, who are elder BGF statesmen in control of larger territories and maintain discipline and settle disputes among bubbles in their territory.

Dead Man Incorporated

The 2013 Maryland Gang Threat Assessment categorized Dead Man Incorporated as being among the state's most active prison gangs.

However, the report also notes that it's not strictly a prison gang because its members still operate outside the Maryland corrections system, though criminal activity is controlled from behind bars.

The predominantly white gang formed in Maryland in 2000, an inception closely tied to the BGF, according to information from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.

DMI started expanding in 2006, recruiting members from outside prison and women, a news release states. Members have also been active in prisons in Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Texas.

The gang's founder, Perry Roark, was sentenced to life in January 2013 on federal racketeering, drug and murder charges just as he was preparing to be released from prison. He was part of a 2011 federal indictment that charged 22 alleged DMI members.

Crips

The crips formed as a Los Angeles street gang in the 1960s, but a 2009 Department of Legislative Services Office of Policy Analysis report on gang crime in Maryland shows the group is present in nine Maryland counties with subsets in eight.

At the time, it was one of the most prevalent Security Threat Groups identified by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The 2015 National Gang Report from the National Gang Intelligence Center placed it among the five most common gangs present in state and federal prisons.

In Baltimore City, the 2009 report estimated there are 45 identified street gangs with approximately 1,800 members, which includes approximately 300 Crips members.

A set of that gang, the 8-Trey Crips, operates in several parts of Maryland both on the streets and in prisons, according to a November 2017 news release on the indictment of 26 people following an investigation into gang activity in Maryland correctional facilities.

Among those indicted was a correctional officer who, according to officials, also served as a high-ranking member of the 8-Trey Crips, overseeing drug dealing and other illicit activities near the intersections of Frankford Avenue and Sinclair Lane in Baltimore City.

In addition to bringing banned items into prisons, the release alleged the gang was also responsible for violence inside these facilities, orchestrating an inmate stabbing and getting involved in a physical altercation with correctional officers who tried to seize contraband.

Charges against the defendants included attempted first-degree murder, gang participation and smuggling contraband into prison facilities.